Getting rid of pest snails

This is a discussion on Getting rid of pest snails within the Invertebrates forums, part of the Freshwater and Tropical Fish category; -->
Originally Posted by markroba1
An assassin snail will eat small snails, if the snails you want to keep are larger than the assassin it ...

An assassin snail will eat small snails, if the snails you want to keep are larger than the assassin it should leave them alone.

Don't know where you get your info but assassins will hunt and kill any size snail. I have lots and they will tackle a mystery snail if they could. I feed them pond snails, bladder snails and MTS's. If you only have one assassin snail in a 20 gallon it will go after the pond snails and ramshorn first, but if it gets a chance to hook onto a mystery it will feast on it. Assassin snails eat one snail per day any size. If you want to keep your mystery and Nerites do not get assassin snails. If you have a planted tank and you decide to get a loach it will uproot most of your plants, and they will out grow a 20 in no time.

I agree that you should not buy a fish to solve a snail problem especially one that will out grow that size tank quickly.

Marshallsea if you do the bleach solution I would just do it on a few like you said then wait a week or two and see how the plants do. They may not show distress from it for a couple of weeks. I did a H202 dip that I saw for algae on plants once. Yeah that was bad. The plants looked great at first something like 2 weeks later they died. I am not going to tell ya not to do it just be on the caution side of it.

Today I started the process. I pulled 1/2 of my plants , put them in a bucket with a dose of Coppersafe. I think this will kill the snails and eggs. After 24 hours I will rinse well and put them in a qt tank. Then I will boil the driftwood for some minutes to kill eggs and snails and put it in the qt tank.I will then bleach and rinse the hob filter and heater and install. Then the Betta and Mystery and Nerite snails .( After a q-tip to the shells to get any eggs that may be on them.) And daily watch the qt for any pests. Clean and dry the main tank. After 2-3 weeks with no snails put it all back in main tank. Fast plants are the key since to kill the pest snail population, the good bacteria will be killed also. I'll keep you posted.

Last night I put 1/2 of my plants in a tub with the recommended dose of Coppersafe. This morning all pest sails are dead and I couldn't find any eggs. I have them in the qt with the boiled driftwood. I'll watch for pest snails .